A different approach to R&D

[chreden]

With the demise of in-season track testing computer simulation plays a larger role in developing the car. However teams can only realistically spend so much (time and money) on equipment and the larger teams still have more to play with in this area than some of the smaller teams. I was thinking about how a smaller team could bridge this gap without investing too much in processing hardware; how they could get more out of less.

Some of you may know of distributed computing - work is divided into small chunks and sent out to client computers, processed and sent back to the server where it is verified with the results from other clients. Current applications include protein folding, searching for extra terrestrial signals and attempting to cure cancer, amongst others.

My idea is for a team to apply this to help the development of their car. The team would run the simulations, store the data and later send it off for analysis to people who have opted in. This way they could dedicate more of what they have to actually running simulations rather than analysing results.

As for who they would actually send it off to, I thought it would be interesting if the fans could opt in to do work for teams. It would get them feeling more involved in the sport and more connected to their chosen team. For further incentive there could be minor rewards when certain processing milestones are reached; free hats or something. The value of the data would more than offset the cost of a hat. Even without free hats, you would be amazed what people will do to make their work done number bigger than the other guy.

There are probably some issues with this such as companies getting involved and the fact that the work isn't being done on site, but I thought I would bring up the idea for some debating anyway . Feel free to point out the giant flaws I've missed!

(First thread, woo )

 

[Brogan]

I get you.

This is like that SETI thing where you download a small application and your computer searches a tiny microspot of the night sky looking for alien life?

In theory it's an interesting idea but the problem is the teams all have different aero, chassis', etc. so I'm not sure how it could work.

If it was related to something common like tyres or circuits then yes, it would be possible.

Now where do I get my free hat?

 

[chreden]

This is like that SETI thing where you download a small application and your computer searches a tiny microspot of the night sky looking for alien life?

In theory it's an interesting idea but the problem is the teams all have different aero, chassis', etc. so I'm not sure how it could work.

Yes, like SETI@Home.

The data would still need to be gathered by the team and stored. The application the client downloads would contain the code to analyse the data, which could be provided by the team as well so it could do team specific processing.

Now where do I get my free hat?

Well I'll get the wind tunnel up to speed (the neighbours love it) and once you give me the results you can have your hat!

 

[cider_and_toast]

The only flaw I can see in your cunning plan is that there are bound to be security issues with the data. While the amount of information being handled by each client is relatively small, you know what the world of F1 is like when it comes to trying to keep secrets. I expect if more than one team was to use this method they would write software into their programmes that looked for similar applications on your hard drive and copied that data into their own files and so on.

Like the idea of a free hat though.

 

[chreden]

I expect if more than one team was to use this method they would write software into their programmes that looked for similar applications on your hard drive and copied that data into their own files and so on.

Granted, certain F1 teams aren't exactly masters of PR, but I think even they would think twice before deploying what would be essentially spyware. It wouldn't look good if it was discovered (and it would be, pretty quickly).

If say there was one application which teams can provide plugins for most of these problems could be solved; the code the team wrote could be isolated so it can only read what it's given. These plugins could be properly vetted too.

Like the idea of a free hat though.

The world is a better place with free hats.